Jones/Rose Heir Hunters

Today the heir hunters uncover a tragic family story as they track down the heirs

to a £40,000 cash estate.

They're looking for long-lost relatives who have no idea

they're in line for a windfall.

Could they be knocking at your door?

On today's programme...

The heir hunters have got their work cut out searching

for the descendants of a man with one of the most common surnames in the country.

They knew that Ronald died.

-So this is correct, then?

-This is correct.

And a straightforward investigation goes global as they hunt

for the beneficiaries of an unsung hero of rock 'n' roll.

If you listen to the man, he was born to perform.

Plus, how you may be entitled to inherit some of the unclaimed estates held by the Treasury.

Could thousands of pounds be heading your way?

Every year in the UK, an estimated 300,000 people die without leaving a will.

If no relatives are found,

then any money left behind will go to the Government.

Last year, they made £12 million from unclaimed estates.

That's where the heir hunters come in.

They make it their business to track down missing relatives

and help them claim their rightful inheritance.

It is rewarding when one can put people in touch with one another.

It's Thursday morning in central London

and in the offices of heir hunters, Fraser & Fraser,

boss Neil is scanning the Treasury's weekly register of unclaimed estates.

One listing of the popular surname Jones catches his eye.

He's not 100% convinced it's the right case to pursue.

On this case of Jones, I've really got no idea how much it's worth.

Before I commit loads of staff here or even drop the case,

I've asked Bob Smith to go down there.

He's going to do an inquiry with the neighbours.

He's going to hopefully find out whether it's worth £5,000 or £500,000.

Until we get an answer back, I don't want to commit staff to work it.

The heir hunters work on commission, taking a percentage

of the money received by each heir that they sign.

So before he decides to go ahead with this job, Neil wants to know

that it's going to be worth his while,

especially because it involves a potentially tricky surname, Jones.

It's still early in the morning, but Neil's keen to stay ahead

of the competition, so he gets straight on the phone to Bob Smith.

Ronald Jones. All right, OK. Off we go.

The company employs several travelling heir hunters like Bob who are based all over the country.

It's their job to chase up any lead, no matter where it takes them,

and make sure if there are heirs to be found,

they're first on the doorstep.

Yeah, our deceased, Ronald Jones, died

and, presumably, would have lived in the Basildon area of Essex.

At this stage we don't know whether he lived in rented accommodation

or he owned his own property.

Before Bob can speak to the neighbours, and hopefully find out all this information,

he needs to get hold of Ron's address.

First stop is Basildon register office to collect Ron's death certificate.

Ronald Jones died aged 87 in Basildon in Essex.

He left no will and not even a photograph survives of him.

Before he died, he lived in this modern terraced house.

His neighbour, Lisa Hendy, remembers him fondly.

We really got quite close with Ron.

About ten years ago, we'd been in here for five years

and we were out in the garden

and he'd had a nice cold tinny, as he used to call them, on the go.

He asked my husband if he wanted to join him.

So it's basically been from there, talking the old-fashioned way

over a garden fence, having a gossip and a laugh.

He was a lovely man.

He used to like doing his gardening, meeting people,

getting his newspaper, having chats to people, or going to play bingo.

The way he used to dress was very smart.

Always wore trousers, pair of shoes.

Nice freshly-ironed shirt, very clean shaven,

hair in place all the time.

One day, Ronald had a fall in his back garden.

Lisa called an ambulance and took him to hospital.

Sadly, he never recovered and passed away a month later.

Before he died, Lisa visited him there on fireworks night.

He was there on 5th November, which was his actual birthday.

We were looking out of the window of the hospital.

Ron was saying, "They're celebrating me being in here!"

Even when he really didn't want to be somewhere, he was still jovial and happy.

In the office, the team are waiting to hear

whether the Jones case is a goer or not.

Before they commit to a full-scale investigation,

they need some reassurance that the job is sufficiently high value to be worth their while.

Which is why Rob Smith is in Basildon.

He's been given the job of finding out how much this case is worth

and he's just picked up Ron Jones's death certificate,

which should contain some vital information to help him in his research.

It gives his address in Basildon.

So that's handy.

We'll go there and make inquiries, see if he owned the property,

any information about his family.

But also his date of birth,

5th November, Guy Fawkes Night, in Islington.

The date and place of birth of the deceased

are crucial bits of information.

With these key facts,

the team will be able to start the search for Ronald's wider family.

First things first. Bob needs to find out what he can by going to Ronald's last known address.

I'm actually making inquiries about next door, Ronald Jones. Oh, yes.

We're trying to trace his next of kin.

He apparently has left an estate,

whatever that is, money in the bank, whatever,

and the family need to know because they're entitled to it.

-Yeah.

-All right? OK, but number three?

All right, lovely, thanks. Bye.

Bob moves on to the next house.

The office are depending on him to find out

whether Ronald Jones's estate is worth anything

and to come up

with some information about family members who could inherit.

He's been in this game a long time and knows that only persistence brings results.

And sure enough...

He did have some children,

-but from what I can make out, they were estranged.

-Right.

I believe he's got one or two daughters that live somewhere in London.

Bingo. Bob has struck gold.

According to this neighbour, Ronald Jones has children living in London.

Apparently they were estranged from their father,

but they would still inherit any money.

Bob also discovers that the estate has some value.

Although Ronald didn't own his house, when his property was cleared after his death,

a jaw-dropping discovery was made.

£40,000 in cash.

That's lovely. Thanks very much.

This is a great result for Bob.

Thanks to him, the team now know that Ronald has two estranged daughters

who would be the sole heirs to their father's £40,000 estate.

But where there's money, Bob knows there will probably be competition from the 30 or so

other heir hunting companies.

And he's still dealing with one of the most common surnames in the UK.

There's a long way to go before this case is solved.

Back in the office, the team now have the crucial information

they need to get to work.

The heir hunters now know they are dealing with

what they call a direct kin case.

This means the deceased had children that can inherit.

The heir hunters know that once they've found them,

it will be job done.

Researcher Debbie has been online looking for birth records for Ronald Jones's children.

She's made an interesting discovery.

Apparently the deceased, Mr Ronald Jones, had four kids,

was married before.

So we're speculatively looking at marriages for him.

According to the information Debbie's found online,

Ronald had four children, not two like the neighbour said.

London is full of Joneses, so finding them will be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The one lead they have is they know Ronald was born in Islington,

a fact gleaned from his death certificate,

so it's the best place to start looking for other family members.

Case manager David Pacifico has taken charge of the investigation.

-Did you speak to Bob?

-No, I left a message.

The first thing he does is to recruit another travelling heir hunter, Bob Barrett.

-Are you in Hammersmith?

-No, Chelsea Bridge now.

-Could you go to Islington?

-Right.

-Thanks, Bob.

Bob heads off to collect Ron's birth certificate from Islington register office

and to see what other Jones family records he can find there.

While Bob makes his way across London,

David Pacifico is trying to consolidate what they know so far about this case.

Jones. Now, this is a case where we found out from a neighbour

that he had about £40,000 in cash in the house.

A council house but 40,000, so well worth looking at.

I've got Bob Barrett going to Islington to pick up the birth

of the deceased, Ronald Jones, hoping it might give us good information.

Hopefully some decent names of the parents.

But Noel's already working on identifying Ronald's parents

and amazingly, he strikes lucky.

Out of all the Jones marriages registered in Islington,

the first one he finds is the right family.

Brinley. Dad's Brinley Jones,

married September 1930.

Islington. She's Alice Hall.

Ronald's parents were Brinley Jones and Alice Hall.

Brinley and Alice had three children, Ronald,

a son Brinley and a daughter, Doris.

We've done a death search of Brinley Jones Junior.

He died in Brentwood in 1998.

His address was in Basildon, same place as the deceased guy.

We've just found out the phone number of his widow.

David's going out now.

If she's there now, hopefully we might get a few answers.

This is a great result for the team.

If they can speak to Brinley's widow, she may be able to give them some vital information

about Ronald's marriage and the whereabouts of his children.

But after all that, she's not in, so David has to leave a message.

We're trying to trace the descendants of a Brinley Jones

and Alice Jones, formerly Hall,

which I'm hoping were the parents to Brinley Jones,

particularly about a possible brother that he may have had by the name of Ronald.

Thank you very much.

It's frustrating for the team.

Somewhere out there in London, Ronald Jones's children

are entitled to share their father's estate.

For the time being, all the heir hunters can do is keep looking for them.

Coming up...

Hang on.

The team make a breakthrough.

She's either living at this address, or this one.

But for David, it comes at a price.

God! Never like that, never like these sort of cases.

Most of the time, the heir hunters are looking for the heirs of people who lived ordinary, everyday lives.

But once in a blue moon, they come across an extraordinary individual

whose legacy touched thousands of people all over the world.

This was the case with Timothy Alan Rose.

When Gareth Langford of heir hunters, Fraser & Fraser, first started investigating,

the name meant nothing to him, but all that was about to change.

When the case was first advertised,

all the information we had was his name, Timothy Alan Rose.

He died in 2002 in Westminster.

From that death,

we knew he was born in 1940, and then the problems started.

Timothy Alan Rose died on 24th September, 2002, in Westminster in London.

But mysteriously, his estate didn't appear on the Treasury's list

until eight years later, in 2010.

The only other information Gareth had was his date of birth.

He had no idea about the value of the estate,

so he didn't even know if the case would be worth pursuing.

The first thing Gareth did was to look around for a birth certificate.

He found one for a Timothy Rose that seemed to fit, but he couldn't be sure.

The birth that we were looking at was a plain Timothy

and it was in slightly the wrong quarter.

We would have expected him to be born in 1940,

and we had the birth in 1941.

So he didn't have the second Christian name

and he was in the wrong year.

We basically had a question of, "Do we work the family that we had the birth certificate

"that we didn't like, or do we go and get the birth certificate?"

What we decided to do was both.

While Dominic went to order the death certificate from Westminster Register Office,

the team got busy researching the family of this Tim Rose

without a middle name.

It wasn't long before they'd made fantastic progress,

even lining up several beneficiaries who would be entitled to inherit.

It looked like this job would be all sewn up in a matter of hours.

But then the death certificate arrived back in the office and changed everything.

Two main things that came from the death certificate.

The first one was that the family we had been working was wrong.

We knew that for two reasons, one because the date of birth was wrong,

but also, more importantly, our deceased was born in America.

For Gareth, this was potentially bad news.

If Tim was American,

then it was likely that his heirs would be American as well,

which means the whole case would have to be handed over to the company's US associates.

But just when this case was looking like a real non-starter,

another key fact leapt off the page.

The second bit of information was that he was a singer-songwriter.

As Dom was telling me on the phone, his occupation,

I immediately thought "We've got to look on the internet for this chap."

If Tim Rose was a successful musician,

then Gareth was expecting that there would be some information about him online

that would give this investigation a helping hand.

But what he actually found was much better than he could ever have hoped for.

There was a wealth of information about him,

including biographies, the music he had done over the years and footage.

It seems that Tim Rose was not your average jobbing musician.

One of the first things that Gareth came across when he looked online

was a clip of Tim on the Jools Holland Show in 1997.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr Tim Rose!

APPLAUSE

Tim had been invited on to the programme to perform the song, Hey Joe.

This was the track that brought him recognition

and later turned into an international hit for Jimi Hendrix.

# Hey Joe

# Where are you going with that money in your hand? #

The more Gareth read, the more intrigued he became

as he came across tribute after tribute to Tim Rose.

He's a connoisseur's artist, really.

He's the sort of person that if you know a lot about

a certain type of music, you'd go towards Tim Rose.

He was obviously highly regarded by both the critics

and his fellow musicians.

Tim was a great performer.

George Harrison wanted him to record With A Little Help From My Friends.

He had a voice which could move

through all the emotions.

It could go from tender to hard-edged, to rock.

I had never heard anything like Tim Rose before.

There was nothing around like Tim Rose.

# I said, I said

# Hey, hey Joe

# Hey, hey

# Hey, Joe!

# Waah!

-# Waah! #

-APPLAUSE

From everything that he had read online, it was clear

to Gareth that despite being an American,

Tim had most of his success in the UK.

It seems he moved over here in the late '60s

and started working with professional roadie, Martin Hughes.

It was the beginning of a 40-year friendship.

I took Tim down to Hastings for his first gig here.

I didn't know what to expect but when I stood at the side

of the stage, and he started up, that did it for me.

He grabbed me straight away. He was demanding, but he was so talented.

Tim's career in the music industry spanned four decades,

but it was anything but consistent.

In the '70s, the gigs dried up and he left London

and went back to the States, where he fell on hard times.

He hit the bottle quite strongly for one period of time.

He sold everything, his car, his home,

even some guitars.

Tim eventually pulled himself back from the brink.

Over the next 20 years or so, he did a variety of jobs,

all of them far removed from the music business.

But one day, he picked up his guitar again.

The bug got him again, and he just, you know,

one thing led to another and back he came.

Tim moved back to the UK. He recorded a few albums

and went out on the road again doing what he loved best.

Playing to his loyal fans.

But sadly, by the late '90s, he was suffering from cancer

and in a lot of pain.

His friends tried to tell him to slow down, but he wouldn't,

he just wanted to work, so he was taking everything on.

Ignoring advice from his doctors, Tim went ahead

and had an operation to remove the tumour.

He didn't survive the surgery

and died the day after his 62nd birthday.

He was in the middle of his latest tour.

If you listen to the man or look at any decent footage of him,

he was born to perform. Music was him.

For Gareth, all this information was extremely encouraging.

If Tim Rose was a successful singer-songwriter,

it was likely there would be some value to his estate.

But Gareth still didn't have any leads on Tim's heirs.

For that, the team had to sift

through the biographical sections of the websites.

They soon discovered that Tim was born on September 23rd, 1940 in Washington DC.

He was an only child whose parents were Harold and Mary Rose.

Harold was described as an absent father

and Tim was brought up by his mother and an unnamed aunt.

One of the things that we've often found with the internet

is that some of the information is correct and some is wrong.

However, in this case, I think we are on the right path,

because we not only had his own website saying this information,

we also had other sources as well,

and they're all pretty much saying exactly the same thing.

Gareth was now confident that he had built up an accurate picture of Tim's close family.

He knew that his parents were Harold and Mary,

and that he was an only child,

so there were no siblings who could inherit.

But the interesting figure in all this

was the unidentified aunt who had helped bring Tim up

and was mentioned on so many of the websites.

If this aunt had got married and had children,

her descendants would be Tim Rose's heirs.

Could she be the key to this entire heir hunt?

Coming up... The heir hunters uncover

the harsh realities of talented Tim Rose's career in the music business.

Tim is the classic nearly-man of rock music.

He was almost there on several occasions.

Heir hunters solve thousands of cases a year

and millions of pounds are paid out to rightful heirs.

But not every case can be cracked.

The Treasury has a list of over 2,000 estates

that have baffled heir hunters and remain unsolved.

Could you be the heir they've been searching for?

Could you be in line for a windfall worth hundreds,

thousands or even millions of pounds?

Estates stay on the list for up to 30 years,

and today we're focusing on three names.

Are they relatives of yours?

Edmund James Peddie died on 4th January 2009 in Coventry.

Edmund had a wife, whose maiden name was thought to be Powell.

If no heirs of Edmund's are found, his money will go to the government.

William James Kingdon died on 19th January 2007 in Clapham, London.

Kingdon is an Anglo-Saxon name,

from the parish of Kingsdon near Somerton in Somerset.

The greatest concentrations of Kingdons in the country live in Exeter.

Does anyone remember William?

Brenda Gagg died on 24th April 1998,

aged 78 in Radford, Nottingham.

Gagg is a very rare surname in Britain.

Only six people in a million have it,

and the majority of them live in Torquay.

Brenda left no will, and so far no one has come forward to claim her estate.

If the names Edmund Peddie, William Kingdon or Brenda Gagg

mean anything to you, or someone you know,

you could have a fortune coming your way.

Heir hunters, Fraser & Fraser, are searching for the heirs

to Ronald Jones' £40,000 estate.

The case had got off to a slow start.

Neil wasn't sure that it would be worth enough to justify

a full investigation.

On this case of Jones, I've really no idea about the value

but I don't like turning cases down.

Then travelling heir hunter, Bob Smith, made a startling discovery.

He heard that after Ronald had died,

they had found £40,000 in cash stashed around his house.

Ronald's friend Lisa was there when the money was found, and she couldn't believe

where he had hidden it all.

Behind wardrobes, in coat pockets, in suit jackets,

detachable hoods from coats. There was a large amount of money that he'd put in there.

I think he probably didn't want to put it in a bank

because he probably felt safer with it on him,

where he could keep an eye on it more than the bank managers,

probably knowing Ron!

The team are working on the theory that this case involves near kin.

The neighbours told them that Ronald had some children, but they were probably estranged.

Their best hope of tracing these children is to go back

through Ronald's family and find someone who remembers them

or knows of their whereabouts.

The dad is Brinley Jones.

Researcher, Noel, found a phone number for Ronald's brother, Brinley's, widow,

but she wasn't in to take the call.

Thank you very much.

But then suddenly, he makes another breakthrough.

Hang on.

She is either living at this address or this address.

He's managed to track down Brinley's widow's daughter.

David heads off to try his luck again.

Would I be right in saying you would be the daughter of a Brinley John Jones?

Brinley's daughter is in, and better still,

her mum is visiting her and is happy to speak to David.

Mrs Jones, I represent a company of probate researchers in London.

We're trying to track down the closest next of kin

of your brother-in-law, Ronald Jones.

The closest ones obviously would be his children.

Jennifer?

What about Kathleen?

Brinley's widow tells David that Ronald's wife was called Lydia

and they had two daughters, Jennifer and Kathleen.

But she also has news about the two other children.

What, when they were very young?

Oh, dear!

David has learnt that the two other children, Martin and Jacqueline,

died when they were infants in a car accident.

Sadly, it seems that the stress of this tragedy took its toll

and Ronald and Lydia later divorced.

Worse still, Lydia was recently killed in another road accident.

Well, you have given us a lot of information

and I'm sure we can track them down.

How old would Jennifer and Kathleen be now?

Would they be sort of...

Thank you very much indeed, Mrs Jones.

David has uncovered the sad story of a family dogged by tragedy.

What's more, it seems that Brinley's widow

hasn't seen her nieces in years, so not only were they estranged

from their father, but from his whole side of the family.

David checks back in with the team.

I spoke to the mother.

They knew that Ronald died.

-So this is correct?

-This is correct.

Now it's been confirmed that there are only two heirs, it's all systems go for the heir hunters.

David calls travelling researcher, Bob Barratt.

He's at Islington register office looking for birth and marriage certificates

for Ronald Jones and his family.

Can you just hold fire a minute? I think we're going to work a few things out.

OK, so we don't want anything from Islington?

Basically, what we're going to get is probably irrelevant now.

We've got the names of the children,

we've got a married name of one of the daughters.

I think this'll come out in North London, but I'm not sure whereabouts at the moment.

No problem, OK, cheers. Bye.

Bob Barratt is standing by awaiting his next instructions, so David gets back to the hunt.

He knows he's very close

to finding an address for one of Ronald's daughters,

and sure enough...

This is Kathleen's address.

David gets straight back on the phone.

Bob, David.

I have got an address in Islington, London N1.

See if you can get any joy at that address.

We're plugging away, but that's the closest we've got so far.

-OK, I will go round there now and see how we get on.

-Thanks.

It's now over to Bob Barrett.

He's got an address, so he can finally swing into action.

But on a case like this one, he knows he needs to tread carefully.

You never quite know what you're walking into

with a relationship as close as this.

I do not know whether...

Whether I'll find Kathleen, but if I do,

I don't know how she's going to react to the news

that her father has died.

Near-kin cases are very hard for the heir hunters.

They often involve unhappy stories of estrangement

and the team have to be prepared for the difficult task

of breaking the news that someone's children or parents have died.

On this occasion, it turns out Kathleen isn't at home,

but Bob does manage to speak to her neighbour.

-Hi.

-Hello. I've finally found it.

Hello, I'm trying to trace Kathleen Hogg at number 14.

-I am from a company called Fraser & Fraser.

-OK, Kathleen Hogg.

She's a friend of mine, I have her phone number.

I will just go and get it for you.

-Does she still live there?

-Yes, she does.

Now that Bob has a phone number for Kathleen, it is time for him to call back to the office.

-David Pacifico, please.

-Hold the line, please.

-Thank you.

-Hi, Bob.

-Kathleen Hogg does still live at that address.

-OK.

I have a mobile telephone number for Mrs Hogg

and I was wondering if it might be better

-if someone from the office rings, rather than me on a mobile.

-Sure.

This will be a difficult phone call for David to make,

but the heir hunters always try to respect the family's feelings.

I'm sorry to trouble you.

I'm sorry, I don't know how to say this,

but unfortunately, it's to do with your father.

I'm sorry to say that he has since passed away.

We're trying to trace his next of kin,

which it would seem would be yourself and your sister.

What I'm hoping that we could do is discuss the matter in more detail

because it's obviously difficult over the phone.

Thank you, bye.

God, I never like that, I never like these sort of cases.

-That was Kathleen.

-Kathleen.

-That was Kathleen.

Kathleen was very upset to hear the news of her father's death

but she has agreed to meet with Bob Barrett.

I've mentioned about, obviously, her father's passed away.

-Also mentioned that we've spoken to one of her sister-in-law daughters.

-Right.

-I had to be totally open about it. I hate these cases.

-I know.

-Telling someone a parent's died.

-It's awful, isn't it?

Bob sets off for Kathleen's son's house, where she's been staying.

He's about to meet his first heir on this case,

which is a key moment in any heir hunt.

He also knows that Kathleen has just heard that her father has died

so he wants this experience to be as painless as possible for her.

-Bob Barrett from Fraser & Fraser. I think you're expecting me.

-Yes.

I mean, I'm sorry that we had to break the news about your dad.

You hadn't seen him for a while.

I think I was about 29 the last time I saw him.

I was very close to my dad when he was with my mum.

They split up when I was about seven and a half, eight.

Then he moved to Australia, so we lost contact.

Bob tells Kathleen about the money that her and her sister are set to inherit.

I know talking about money is not...

As you say, your father's died.

But apparently there is about £40,000 in cash, I don't know whether David mentioned it to you,

that was found in the house. Whether that was...

Presumably, who knows, savings over many years.

He may have won the lottery the week before, who knows?

He always had money,

but I never expected him to have savings, do you know what I mean?

He was always a free-hearted man.

Kathleen is happy for the company to help her make a claim for her inheritance

in return for a percentage.

She signs up there and then.

-Thanks ever so much, nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

-Bye.

Kathleen has given Bob her sister Jennifer's phone number

and address, so Bob heads off to see her,

leaving Kathleen to consider the desperately sad news she's just received.

I often thought about him, you know.

I wondered what he was up to.

I thought if he wanted to see me, then he'd contact me,

do you know what I mean?

You sort of let things slide, don't you?

Although Kathleen hasn't seen her dad for many years,

she remembers him as a charismatic figure.

Yeah, when he took us out that time when he came to visit us

when I hadn't seen him for ages and I was calling him Dad.

"Don't call me Dad. I don't want people to think I'm old!"

At your age and grandkids, you know! Made me laugh.

He picked me up in his arms when I opened the door.

He picked me up in his arms and swung me round

and he was like...

You know...

I did think we'd see each other again.

It's very sad.

Bob's arrived at Kathleen's sister Jennifer's house,

prepared for another emotional meeting.

As before, David Pacifico has called ahead to break the sad news.

Nice to meet you, Bob Barrett.

Like her sister Kathleen,

Jennifer is happy for the company to help and signs an agreement on the spot.

I'll leave that with you.

File these away before I lose them.

What a surprise, what a shock.

You wouldn't expect this when you got out of bed this morning.

I would have liked him to be alive

so I could have introduced him to my family.

As Bob heads off, Jennifer is also left to reflect

on her long-lost father.

I didn't know him enough, you know.

My mum left him, you see.

She went to live with my nan with me and my sister after the car accident.

I didn't see him again until I was about 15. He came up to our house.

It would have been nice to know he'd written a will for me and my sister.

But...

It's not really, you know...

He's not left it to us, has he?

With both heirs signed with the company,

Bob calls into the office to speak to Dave

and reflect on what's been a difficult day for both of them.

Hello, Bob. I gather you've had another lengthy interview.

I don't know how much the daughters mentioned.

Did they want to know more about their father?

They both seem quite upset about not having seen him for so long.

I think they'd probably appreciate a bit more information about him.

Isn't it a shame? They're wondering about him.

-And it's too late, yeah.

-Yeah.

But it seems there is a chance for Kathleen and Jennifer

to find some comfort amidst their grief.

Ronald's friend and neighbour, Lisa,

has been on the phone to the office, offering to speak to them.

In his final days, Ronald had asked to see his daughters

but Lisa hadn't known how to find them.

Now she can put that right.

I think it'll be one of his biggest regrets

that he didn't keep in contact with them,

especially as the last few days

before he passed, he'd asked to see them.

Ron would want his daughters to have his money

because he would probably want to use that to build the bridge

from maybe where it collapsed when they didn't

speak to each other for so long.

Whatever Ronald's last wishes actually were, in the end, thanks to the heir hunters,

his money will go to his closest living relatives,

his two daughters, Jennifer and Kathleen.

Heir hunter, Gareth Langford, was trying to find the heirs

of American singer-songwriter, Tim Rose.

After quite a bit of research, he discovered this gifted musician was an only child,

raised by his mother and a mysterious aunt

who so far hasn't been named.

Gareth was pinning his hopes on this aunt having married

and had children. As Tim's cousins, they would be in line to inherit.

But despite all these hours of hard work and amazing discoveries,

sadly, for Gareth, it looked like the hunt in England was over.

Once we'd read through all the information on the internet,

it became apparent quite quickly there was very little we could do over here.

He didn't marry.

He was a bachelor, so there was no marriage to look for.

He wasn't born over here,

and it doesn't appear any of his family came over here either.

At that stage, we had to hand it over to our American colleagues

and see if they came up with any good leads.

But for the time being, all Gareth could do was wait

and the chances are, he'd have to wait quite a while.

Heir hunting in the US is a very different proposition.

Unlike the UK, they have no centralised record office for births, marriages and deaths,

and each state has its own rules

governing the release of this information.

Several days went by before Gareth heard anything at all

and when he did hear back, it wasn't good news.

It appears that maybe the deceased was an only child of parents

who were only children.

This was a real blow to the whole investigation.

That would mean there was no possibility of finding any heirs on this case.

But Gareth wasn't giving up yet.

Why would so many different sources on the internet talk about an aunt if she didn't exist?

The more he read about Tim, the more convinced he became

that there was going to be some value in this estate.

The reason why the case was only very recently advertised

is a bit of a mystery. The deceased died in 2002,

but his estate was only advertised on the list in 2010.

I don't know exactly why that's happened,

but one obvious reason is that his albums are selling.

Royalties are due to him, and his estate needs to be settled.

As a published singer-songwriter, Tim would have been earning royalties

from the sale and performance of his records throughout his life

and that would have continued from the eight years since his death.

The reality is that even after you've died,

you can earn money from your performances and your work

for quite some time. Provided they're sold,

provided they're played on radio or TV or in public places,

accounts are made and by the end of the year it all tots up to being, hopefully, a significant sum.

But how many records did Tim Rose sell over his chequered career?

And were they still selling even after his death?

I think Tim is the classic nearly-man of rock music.

He was almost there on several occasions.

There were several times where he nearly had a hit single in this country.

He went on Top Of The Pops, he was on the radio a lot,

he was playing live and getting lots of acclaim and good reviews,

but it didn't quite happen.

The highlight of Tim Rose's career was his first solo album,

so he peaked early.

It is a classic of its time, there's no doubt about it, it's a great album.

One track on that record, Hey Joe,

would prove to be the most important of Tim's career,

but what success he had was soon overshadowed by another up-and-coming American artist.

Very shortly after Tim did a version of the song,

Jimi Hendrix had a hit single with a slow version of the song

that sounds very, very similar to Tim's version,

and he felt hard done by. Hendrix had the big hit with the song,

but Tim had done the arrangement.

Although Tim was disappointed that he never made the big time,

in the end, it was the music and the fans that mattered.

His first London show for nearly 20 years at the Half Moon pub in Putney,

and it was absolutely packed.

A lot of people remembered him at the time,

and then a subsequent generation of people got into him as his records had been reissued.

You could almost see him being blown away by the response.

Very touchingly, I thought, at the end of the show,

he stood at the door and shook hands with every member of the audience as they left.

It was like a vicar saying "goodbye" to people leaving church.

Only a few years after that sensational comeback,

Tim's fans gathered at the Half Moon again.

But this time, it was for his wake.

Martin still comes here every year to remember his friend.

Today is Tim's birthday.

It's the day I come up to London to tidy the grave.

I've called in here for a drink at the same time

and bring back a few memories.

When I play one of his CDs now, which I did on the way up here, in the car,

it always means the same to me. The man is not dead, he's still with us.

He's left his imprint on life, hasn't he?

I mean, we can't get him back, but we can keep the music.

Tim was never in the first rank of rock 'n' roll earners,

but his records were still selling to fans and connoisseurs,

long after his death.

And with the royalties that accrued over the years,

it turns out that the nearly-man of rock may have left a sizable legacy, after all.

Mr Tim Rose!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

But after all that, this heir hunt

was still in the hands of the Americans.

And unless they could find Tim's missing aunt, then any money that he had left behind

would be going straight to the government.

But two weeks later, Frasers got some fantastic news.

Some records had turned up in America that proved that the aunt did exist

and, what's more, she had living descendants.

We've just heard back from our agents in America.

It's good news, really.

It sounds like they've found beneficiaries.

At the moment, I don't know the full extent of the family.

Certainly all the agreements have been sent to them

and they've spoken to all of them.

They're aware, but we're waiting for the reports to come through.

For Neil, it's a satisfying end to a very different kind of investigation.

We've been able to identify a case,

a case which we think has got value, even though initial thoughts

indicated there probably wasn't going to be any value.

We've been able to find the beneficiaries.

We're the first people to find those beneficiaries and we've spoken to them.

We're in a very, very good position.

Fingers crossed now, a waiting game really, to see if the contracts come back to us.

If you would like advice about building your family tree

or making a will, go to:

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd